Cryptocurrency Glossary

Application-Specific Integrated Circuit, specialized hardware designed to efficiently perform a particular computation …

The compensation paid to the block producer, often consisting of transaction fees plus a protocol-issued subsidy (block…

A parameter that controls how hard it is to find a valid Proof of Work. Protocols adjust difficulty to target a desired…

A mechanism that increases mining difficulty exponentially after a certain point, used historically in Ethereum to enco…

A threshold that a block hash must be below (or equal to) to be valid in PoW. Lower targets correspond to higher diffic…

A Proof of Work algorithm designed to be more memory-hard than pure SHA-256, historically used by Ethereum. Memory-hard…

The rate at which miners compute hashes (e.g. hashes per second). Higher hash rate generally increases the cost of atta…

A participant that performs Proof of Work to propose blocks. Miners typically assemble transactions, compute hashes, an…

The process of producing blocks in Proof of Work systems by searching for a valid block hash. Miners collect fees and, …

A coordinated group of miners that share work and split rewards. Pools reduce payout variance for individual miners.

A value that miners vary when searching for a valid Proof of Work, making the block header hash satisfy the target. The…

A valid block that is not part of the eventual canonical chain due to a competing chain being chosen by the fork choice…

A mining strategy where a miner withholds blocks to gain an advantage in the fork choice process. It can increase reven…